<p>"But as tuitions rise, many people are borrowing heavily to pay their bills. Some no doubt view it as "good debt," because an education can lead to a higher salary. But in practice, student loans are one of the most toxic debts, requiring extreme consumer caution . . ."</p>
<p>The fees here were unbielievable…criminal really! The behavior of these creditors should be illegal. These are real problems. However, this student is particularly daft. Beware student loan debt. Excellent article!</p>
<p>All I can say is, WOW! This is crazy!
You would be better served visiting a loan shark…</p>
<p>I thought $300,000 was bad in loan debt. </p>
<p>There needs to be some serious reforms in Congress. This has gone too far.</p>
<p>You guys are joking. The doctor’s decision to put off paying her monthly debt while in residency is simply ■■■■■■■■. The interest compounding is exponential and will create a snowball effect. For her to choose family practice, one of the, if not THE, lowest paying specialties, is even more ■■■■■■■■.</p>
<p>Regardless of how much the loan is, my guess is that a specialist such as an anesthesiologist or dermatologist can pay off any amount of loan. </p>
<p>I think the lesson here is simple: Specialize in medicine or waste your MD.</p>
<p>She makes monthly payments on those loans—now $209,399—for $990 a month, with only $100 of it going toward her original balance. The entire balance of her federal loans will be paid off in 351 months. Dr. Bisutti will be 70 years old.</p>
<p>It sickens me to read that a (now unemployed) factory-worker mom took out a Plus loan and her son maxed out on Stafford loans…all for his $29k job. WHAT??? He should have gone to a CC for two years and a local state school. Why are lowish income parents folding to this nonsense? Tell your kids, “I can’t afford this. You’ll have to work part-time, take out student loans, go to a CC & state school (unless merit or an elite is possible) and that’s it.”</p>
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<p>This is a good point. Your local Mobster isn’t what he was in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays, you’re actually likely to find reasonable interest rates with minimal collateral. Many loan sharks will actually allow you to negotiate the terms of repayment as well as the penalty for default – most people only get one kneecap broken instead of both. While the interest rates are still pretty steep, going to a Mafia loan shark isn’t as bad as it might seem.</p>
<p>She’s a moron. If I decided to chop off my arm and both legs none of you would come here and talk about how sad it is that I now have only 1 arm and no legs.</p>
<p>What ever happens to her she did to herself. “I didn’t read the fine print.” is not an excuse any more than “I didn’t think it was sharp enough to chop off a limb.”</p>
<p>Well, deferring payments during residency isn’t the worst thing you can do. Depending on where you’re practicing and your own life conditions, it can be rough putting any of that 40k-50k towards student loans.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t seem to be the only thing she did. Apparently she also had credit-card debt, and instead of getting a paid job after completing her residency (as any sane person would probably do at this point), she decided to defer payments for yet another four years and go through another residency at 40-50k a year. This is probably a feasible option if you’re planning on going into a lucrative specialty, but certainly not family medicine. It is going to be difficult to repay $250,000 of debt with a $100,000-$120,000 salary (before taxes), but if you defer it for 8 years, it is going to be that much harder. Going into the fellowship and continuing deferment was unwise; fellowships yield very minuscule salary raises, if any at all.</p>
<p>Family medicine is in a rough patch right now specifically because of this. Few sane people want to go into a specialty where they will come out of school with over $200k in debt, have to work 60-80 hour weeks, and only make $100k before taxes. It is simply not worth it when you can specialize and pull in $200k-400k before taxes, and if you go private practice, sometimes much higher than that. </p>
<p>I’m sympathetic with this woman, but I think this is becoming a growing trend. I’m watching someone in my own family struggle to complete her own education without any regard to the debt she has accumulated over the past six years. I think a lot of people fall into a one-track mind where their only focus is on completing their education at any cost, then they get to the end of the road with their BS/MS/PhD/MD degree and realize the devastation they’ve wrought to get there. In the case of BS/MS/PhD, they may come to the realization that this degree is essentially worthless in terms of job prospects.</p>
<p>This is an important lesson for all prospective college students. Always think outside of the box in which you reside. Do you really need this education? What kind of debt are you putting yourself through to get it? In 10 years, is this debt going to cause difficulty in your life? Can you reasonably pay it off with a decent job? Sure, you may want to be a doctor now, but let’s say you decide against it and have to settle with a $40k-60k/yr job, will you be able to live comfortably with this debt?</p>
<p>This is an extreme case, and she got herself into it. I don’t have much sympathy for her, unfortunately.</p>
<p>This is disgusting. The collection fees and compounding interest rates are exorbitant, usurious, and should be illegal.</p>
<p>Medical school is free in other western industrialized countries. Those nations support medical education because it benefits society. They can afford to do this because they don’t waste their tax revenues on a bloated military and unnecessary wars.</p>
<p>^^ Physicians in those countries don’t make 500k+ a year, as some US sub-specialties do.</p>
<p>Is $200k debt too much for a future $150k/year job ? Let the student decide.</p>
<p>In many EU countries, med school is almost free or very cheap but doctors don’t earn $200k (considering strong public health care system). Still, education they receive is great and they earn pretty good money afterwards. AND the biggest plus is that you go to a med school directly after high school.
There are many English speaking med schools in Europe and they last for 6 years. In my city there are Med Studies in English (public university) and it costs €7000/year. Most of the students go to their native countries after graduation</p>
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True, but there’s no need to make those kind of salaries if you don’t take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt before your professional life has begun. The financial situation described in this article will continue to push med students away from family practice and into higher paying specialities – exactly the opposite of what is needed.</p>
<p>I would be scared to have this woman as my doctor if she is that dumb regarding her student loans. She really has no one to blame but herself. If she was seriously ill or something that would be different, however she chose to bury her head in the sand and now she has to pay the piper.</p>
<p>I love how millions of people across America are screaming that this whole system needs to be reformed and Congress needs to take action. Whatever happened to capitalism? These are the same people who whine about Obama being a Socialist. I don’t mean to make this into a political thread, but it just annoys me to see the hypocrisy here. These people should have done their research and realized that they couldn’t afford these loans. Oh well. You win some you lose some. People are stupid and need a kick in the ass sometimes.</p>
<p>don’t buy/pursue things you can’t afford. often times it is not worth racking up the debt to do so.</p>
<p>I understand those who abide by the “buyer beware” caveat, but seriously now, this is ridiculous. I take issue with any kind of system that exposes and entraps people into these type of circumstances in their attempt to obtain an education. Students shouldn’t have to traverse a field of potential land mines like this to obtain an education in this country. And simply blaming them for poor decision-making is pointless. If you hand thousands of people ticking time bombs like this many will inevitably be blown up. It’s not a good way to educate a society no matter who gets blamed after the fact.</p>
<p>This is so ridiculous. Wasn’t there another thread like this a while back about a college graduate that took out a lot of loans and now had a baby, but no way to pay the loans back?</p>
<p>Owing a large amount of money is bad enough, but if you don’t make your payments, there are a lot of fees and penalties tacked on again and again–sometimes amounting to much greater than the original loan amount! That’s what this person found out. </p>
<p>You can’t just ignore your debt or tax obligations…</p>